Forms of Punishment
by Lucky Gun
Summary: Joker discovers Shepard put a gun in the hand of the Asari Huntress who killed his sister, and he violently demands the Commander answer for Hilary's death. Inspired by the conversation of the PTSD Soldier from Huerta Memorial, Aeian T'Goni. Late ME3, Paragon FemShep/Alenko. Language. TRIGGERS INSIDE. STRONG MATERIAL. READ WARNINGS.


Title: Forms of Punishment

Author: Lucky Gun

Description: Joker finds out Shepard put a gun in the hand of the woman who killed his sister, and he violently demands the Commander answer for Hilary's death. Late ME3, Paragon FemShep/Alenko, pure 3 game Shenko. Language, TRIGGERS INSIDE.

A/N: Set immediately after meeting the Leviathans, post-Thessia, very late ME3.

Figured out the connection on my umpteenth play through, and I am fairly ashamed to admit it took me that long. It was begging to be fleshed out; after all, Liara is a very good Shadow Broker. And Joker? Well, he's never mutinied, not once. Think he's due, especially considering the circumstances.

***Please read responsibly!***

This story deals with suicidal ideations in a very raw way. I have tried to be extremely careful in keeping the ideas in line with the story base itself, which wasn't too difficult; game 3 always makes me extremely melancholy and morose. But there is a long description of suicidal thoughts and a suicide attempt due to overwhelming exhaustion, grief, and lingering effects of hypothermia. There is also a description of a completed suicide.

Suicide is never the answer. If you or a loved one is fighting through this, or if you feel like you want to hurt yourself, or if you are so tired you think you can't go one more step, _there are reasons to keep going._

In the US, call 800-273-8255, anytime of any day, for someone to talk to. Call 911 if you feel like you're in danger of hurting or killing yourself or others. Outside the US, call your emergency services line. There are people who care about what happens to you.

* * *

 _However insignificant we might be,_

 _we will fight,_

 _we will sacrifice,_

 _we will find a way._

 _That's what humans do._

* * *

It was a state of entirely encompassing exhaustion inspired by senseless acts of violence.

Kasumi was the one who'd said it first, originally describing her own lethargy with fighting any of the injustice in the galaxy. Then, months into the campaign against the Collectors, she'd changed her subject and had declared Shepard _kuebiko_ embodied. And she was, truly. There's only so much someone can take before they break, and the Marine was continually approaching that barrier, reaching it just as the bar was somehow, impossibly, set higher.

In the quietness of the shuttle, though, it was weighing down every part of her, and she felt like she was drowning all over again.

The trip to the depths of the ocean to find the Leviathans had been terrifying, in more than one sense. She'd been alone, utterly and perfectly, in a way that rivaled even her slow death over Alchera. Being there and speaking with the massive creatures of eons past had chased that emotion away in order for it to be replaced by the much more visceral fear of failure. Then there was pain, pressure in her head and in her implant that made her thoughts physically ache in her skull, and the taste of copper was still tight on her tongue. Rising through the water was like coming up to see the sun after a thousand years underground.

Her return to reality was hidden behind the roars of Brutes and the echo of rifle fire, and her memory was sketchy at best. But she remembered grey and blue armor propping her up as they ran for the shuttle swarming with husks, and she was still as cold as she was then. Shuddering, she shrunk a little deeper into herself and missed the looks of concern she received from her squad members. If Garrus silently reached over and tapped the environmental controls up a few notches, Kaidan didn't say anything about it. Instead, he kept his omni tool open and the medical suite on it spun up as the shuttle punched its way through the storm.

Eyes locked on the rain slicking the windows outside, Shepard failed to suppress a shiver as her system tried to find equilibrium. That, it seemed, was Kaidan's last straw. He was silent as he reached over and palmed open her own computer, brown eyes studying the data scrolling over it with a frown. Then he reached up and pressed his fingers against the side of her neck, sensors in his gloves taking readings while she steadfastly pretended he wasn't anywhere near her. She ignored his presence just as she had since she'd first awoken and shoved herself into the jumpseat while pinching the bridge of her nose and leaning forward. Bloody noses weren't anything new to her, but she still hated them with a passion. When he'd come forward to help her, she'd shied away like a kicked dog.

She couldn't do _close_ right now. Hell, to _exist_ was a tall order. The knowledge that everything was a cycle wasn't at all new. It was one of the first things she'd heard from Liara, actually, that there were ruins built upon each other, that this kept happening again and again. But knowing that this ultimate tragedy – this harbinger of their perfection, their ascension – was the same thing as the Quarians and the Geth, the Protheans and the Zha'til, and countless other organic and artificial constructs fighting over the same dead, empty space...

No, she couldn't do close, because that felt like weakness, felt like relying on something human and fallible. That felt like shoving two middle fingers up at the rest of the galaxy and telling the beings within it to fuck off, because she was tired. That felt like something she just couldn't do, because everyone was expecting her to have the answers to every question in front of her.

It was damn clear, since Thessia, that she didn't have a goddamn clue.

From the cockpit, Cortez's voice filtered back at random intervals, his low baritone soothing and familiar. It pushed her dark thoughts to the background for a moment, and the exhaustion swept in like the tide. Exhaling slowly, Shepard tilted her head back and ignored the slight static on her skin from Kaidan's scan. The dim rattle of distant thunder around the transport was equally calming, and she breathed deeply and evenly, convinced that one day, she could wake up and everything about her life since Eden Prime would just be a nightmare. She felt Kaidan's biotics brush reassuringly against hers and resisted a slight smile.

Well, almost everything.

"Edi, your traffic was...unreadable. Say again?"

There was a slight hint of alarm in Steve's voice when it caught Shepard's ear, and her moment of peace burned away like fog in daylight. The ever-present ache in her limbs was intense as she blinked her green eyes open and forced herself to focus.

 _I'll sleep when I'm dead_ , she'd told Garrus after losing Mordin, and damned if the universe wasn't going to hold her to that.

She was gentle with her motions but persistent in them as she pushed Alenko away and stood on jello knees. They barely locked and she grabbed the guide rail above her to hide the weakness; if the Turian's slight scoff was anything to go by, she didn't cover it well. She came slowly to the front of the passenger compartment and leaned forward. The screens here were disabled, unlike in the rear, so she couldn't tell their location easily. By the slight chop, they were just finishing their atmospheric exit.

"I said I would handle the docking procedures, Mr. Cortez, as Jeff has gone to speak with Liara regarding a personal matter," the synthetic stated calmly over the comm.

Sensing her presence, the pilot glanced over his shoulder and shrugged slightly as he apologized, "Sorry if I disturbed you, Commander. It's been a running gag with Joker about docking and backseat driving and such. It just threw me that he's not there."

Frowning and cocking her head slightly, Shepard nodded absently and murmured, "You're not wrong. That's very unlike him. Any unusual radio traffic or relay signals since we landed? When's the last time we received an update from him?"

Her voice was still a bit cracked, and she refused to turn at the aggravated huff behind her.

"Cortez, don't answer that. Shepard, I'm sure Joker's fine but you're not; you have _got_ to take a break. You're suffering from some seriously high blood pressure, your core temp is at ninety five degrees, you've got ten earmarks of long term total sleep deprivation, and you're dehydrated. Don't make me sedate you," her second growled lowly.

Giving herself a two count to pull together some guise of normalcy, she stoked a bit of fire in herself as she turned around, taking care not to faceplant in the process.

"You need to back off, Major," she ordered, emphasizing his rank with a narrowing of her eyes. He didn't rise to the bait, though Garrus shifted uncomfortably in place. "Joker's entitled to downtime as needed – you all are – but he knows better than to vacate the helm when both the CO and XO are disembarked."

His own gaze flashing with both ire and worry, Kaidan took a step forward and snapped, "So, half-dead on your feet, you're going to start quoting the Alliance rules and regs to me? Now? After you've commandeered untested equipment to do a solo dive into unscanned waters to contact a known enemy in some renegade hope of making them allies?"

She blinked, startled at the venom in his voice, and his own tone lowered and was slightly strangled as he added gently, "You're running yourself into the ground, Shepard, and you're forcing us to sit back and watch it happen. Take a break, _please_. You can trust us to hold the line for a little bit. Just...I'm begging you."

There was something in the way he said it that dismantled her defenses, all at once. Maybe it was the way he ran his hand through his hair while his shoulders fell. Maybe it was the way he shifted his weight to the side so that she glanced at her best friend, whose mandibles were tight with his own unspoken anxiety. Maybe it was the way Steve actually did shut up and refused to entertain her questions any longer. Maybe it was the specter looming above his words, the concept that maybe they thought she didn't trust them like she absolutely, completely did.

Maybe it was the sound of her own heartbeat thumping in her head, a cadence that sounded an awful lot like a young boy laughing.

"Okay," she finally said softly, her own gaze dropping to the floor, and she felt darkness pressing at the edges of her vision.

The tug jerked as it cleared the planet's atmosphere, and she stumbled forward, losing her grip on the rail above her. She should have been embarrassed or frustrated, but she couldn't drag up enough energy for it. She was just so damn tired...

"Jesus, Shep," Kaidan's voice whispered over her senses, and she could feel her armor knock against his as she fell into him. "Fought that long enough, don't you think?"

She didn't answer, just hummed under her breath, and there was a slight sense of weightlessness as she felt herself lowered to the deck. Armor added sixty pounds to the mix, and her Hahne-Kedar pauldrons were bulky as hell, so she didn't take offense. Nothing in her was cooperating anymore, Shepard's entire body simply giving out, and she couldn't bite back a groan as her body made every ache and pain perfectly known. It started in her bones and worked out to her skin, the muscles around her port spasming beneath her short blond hair. She tensed against the arms wrapped around her, hissing through her teeth.

"Just breathe, baby. We've got you, okay? I've got you."

She tried, she really did. She tried to ignore the burn from her sides as her cracked ribs she picked up at Sanctuary screamed, fought to unclench the hand that was twisting her sprained wrist. There was a telltale tightness along her spine that told of deep bruising, and her lumbar support pressed against it painfully. A variety of lacerations and blisters rubbed against the inside of her armor in all the wrong ways, and she stiffened. Above everything, her thoughts were going a billion miles a minute, breaking every FTL barrier known.

 _Leviathans can bring down Reapers._

 _Cerberus has the data on the Catalyst._

 _Abominations will swarm choke points and detonate._

 _Edi self-determined her morals two days ago._

 _I need to keep my rock from Rannoch on Intai'sei._

 _Where did Grunt put his shotgun after we left the Attican Traverse?_

On and on her thoughts went, resting on nothing, touching on everything, and she whimpered as she felt for that deep weariness and silently begged it to take her. It didn't, resisting her, and Shepard hovered on that frustrating edge of needing to and being simply too tired to fall asleep. Consumed with her own internal struggle, she didn't even realize her eyes were open, bloodshot and watering as she stared up at the shuttle's ceiling.

But Garrus had frequently seen this part of her when tracking the Collectors, this runaway freight train of knowledge taking control when she didn't have the energy to raise her rifle anymore. Then, it had just been him and Tali and Joker keeping whatever kind of sanity she still had; they should have been expecting it, really. Missing the support of the Admiralty and the rest of the Alliance, constantly under the scrutiny of the Illusive Man, and buffeted by the dismissal of her plight by both Alenko and Liara, Shepard had crashed more often than she landed. And when she burned, that fire seemed to leave behind a little more ash each time.

With a low growl, the Turian gave Kaidan an appraising glance as he knelt beside them, his outer jaw lifting slightly. The Spectre's expression was controlled, though his own frustration was obvious as he watched the woman in his arms rock mindlessly against his hold, his breathless whispers unable to break through to her. There was a distinct squelch from some of her front plating that hinted at the injuries hiding beneath, drawing his attention, and Garrus' optical display was flashing dimly with vitals that seemed closer linked to combat than rest. Shepard's minute trembling and flushed cheeks proved its diagnosis correct.

"Haven't seen her this bad since right after Aratoht," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head as he looked up and added, "Your tactics aren't working as they usually do, Major. I'm sure you don't mind if I try something from your high horse days."

Later, Garrus would admit there was some censure in his sharp words, even if it was mostly borne of his normal sarcasm. It was true that he and Alenko had worked out their issues several months prior, a few rounds in the ring leaving both of them bruised and weary. Immediately after, two bottles of shard wine had gotten out everything that sweat and blood hadn't. In Kaidan's defense, Garrus hadn't been kind. Horizon was a knife, and he used it mercilessly. For his part, the biotic hadn't argued with that point – he owned it fully – but he had his own reservations about Archangel's activities, not to mention the former C-Sec officer refusing to pull Shepard away from Cerberus once his vigilante persona was killed. But the two of them had come to a firm agreement that had eventually become their friendship reforged, and it centered around their Commander and protecting her as well as they could.

It was that tried and tested trust in each other that had Kaidan doing nothing more than swallowing hard with a nod. Returning the gesture, Garrus bent low over the now-gasping soldier, his voice soft as his breath brushed her ear.

"Shepard, I need you to think for me, and think hard. I need you to focus on my words. I need you to answer me. What's the square root of nine hundred six point oh one?"

A moment later, it was like a switch had been flipped in Shepard's mind. The incessant march of sheer panic parading through her head faded into foggy nothingness. She blinked, eyes burning, the face of David Archer abruptly swarming her vision. The worries slowed, the thoughts focusing on the math that was less technique and more repetition from memory. There was a simpleness to it, like counting sheep, and there was an overwhelming current of relief that poured over her.

"Thirty point one," she sighed as she closed her eyes.

"What's the square root of nine twelve point oh four?" he rumbled again, and Shepard shivered as she felt warm air circulate from the venting system near her.

"Thirty point two," she whispered, going completely boneless in Kaidan's grasp.

There was a light touch on her cheek, soothing even if cool, and she heard nothing else as darkness swept everything away.

* * *

She hadn't been asleep long, maybe twenty minutes, but the incessant ding of the docking alarm bit through her awareness.

Shepard roused yet stayed still, enjoying a tight little bubble of relative tranquility. There was noise, the soft murmuring of a few voices, one of them quietly swearing at the warning signal. For a brief moment, she felt no pain, no exhaustion, as though everything was waiting at bay for her to have enough energy to feel destroyed once again. She let it hover at the edges of her consciousness, giving herself this one moment in time to enjoy what the world was giving her.

Kaidan's fingers carded gently through her hair in a pattern she knew and loved. She felt a familiar pressure on her shoulder, a three fingered grip holding her in place firmly as her outer armor was shucked carefully from her skin. There was another touch, this one less common but still known, a warm human hand working off her Armax Arsenal chest and rear plackart. As more of her thin gambeson was revealed, she should have been cooler, but there was a distinctive taste of heat in the air.

Then the serenity was over, the ragged shudder of the locking arms clamping around the shuttle and awakening every part of the agony inside her that had been still slumbering. Arching her back, Shepard inhaled sharply, her left arm immediately going to brace her ribs while her right wrist throbbed in time with her pulse.

"Easy, Shep, we've gotcha. We're home," Kaidan soothed gently, and she blinked her gritty eyes open, finally finding him.

There was a paleness in his own skin that told of too much time in armor and far too little exposure to something other than a battlefield, and even though his lips were chapped, he still smiled warmly at her. She tried to smile back but felt a cut on the inside of her cheek pull hard, and she was fairly certain it came out more like a grimace. He noticed and chuckled, shaking his head, a short lock of hair slipping from its usual place. It cast a shadow on his face, one that didn't go away when he finally helped her sit up from where she rested in his lap.

Glancing down, she quickly figured why.

Under her black three quarter sleeve combat doublet, the front of it unfastened and falling open, her abdomen and upper chest were bare. There were bruises in every stage of healing, dark blues and purples ringed with sickly greens and yellows, and abrasions, burns, and cuts adorned her skin. There was the sludgy slickness of clotting factor that someone had spread straight into the worst of the wounds. In some places, her armor had worn so frequently and harshly against her that it had turned simple pressure blisters into open ulcers that leaked puss and blood equally. Her white sports bra was tinted with grease and sweat, the edges pinked with plasma. Her forearms were heavily bruised, her right wrist visibly swollen, and her fingers were ten shades of mottled. There was old tape here and there wrapped around her knuckles, but it was frayed with age and use. Her legs were covered by her cuisse, but she knew there was a similar map written there.

At least they left her boots on; God knows what they'd think of her three missing toenails.

Still exhausted but refusing to take a lecture, Shepard raised her eyes to her XO and fixed him with a hard look. He completely ignored it and gave her an exasperated glare.

"How long has it been since you've done more for yourself than a field application of medigel?"

She shrugged slightly, wincing as her right shoulder blade and every vertebrae barked at her for it, and finally answered, "Been a little busy fighting robots the size of the Burj Khalifa, Kaidan. Didn't have time."

Immediately holding up a hand to forestall Garrus' reach to help her stand, he shook his head and demanded, "No, no more. This stops now, do you understand me? You may think you deserve this physically in whatever screwed up way your brain has processed everything since Saren, but you don't."

Shepard flinched back at that, immediately averting her eyes, and her headache roared to the front of her awareness in half a heartbeat. She swallowed and felt this otherworldly sense of anger at him for daring to be that...that _right_ about anything.

So she ignored him firmly and reached up with her left hand, snagging Garrus' talons and hauling herself upright. She stumbled at the abrupt change in altitude and the Turian immediately wrapped a quick arm around her, stooping lower to support her better. Kaidan was on his feet instantly, his hands gentle on her back, and Shepard squeezed her eyes shut as she breathed harshly through her nose at the fucking _explosion_ of torment that rocked through her system. Her right ankle rolled under her and there was a new grip under her elbows, Steve's steady fingers hooking carefully around her joints. Pride in front of these three had been long cast to the wayside – Kaidan and Garrus had known her longer than anyone, and there was just a comforting part of Cortez that reminded her of home.

But soon enough that constant alarm finally dimmed from the background and she quivered in place for a few seconds before blinking back something that was definitely not tears. Leaning back, she kept her eyes closed and mindlessly worked numb fingers and fastened up the front of her doublet all the way to her throat. The dark grey subarmor was breathable but waterproof, so the oily coagulants and wetness of her blood were well hidden beneath it. It wasn't unusual for crew members to be awaiting her squad's return after a mission, James and even Tali sometimes standing by in the shuttle bay. And while she entrusted the two of them with a certain amount of truthfulness behind the danger in her missions, she tried to keep the worst of it from Liara and Javik. The Asari took any of Shepard's injuries too close to heart after her rebirth, while the Prothean usually muttered something about human frailty in that condescending voice of his.

Neither reaction was something she needed, wanted, or could force herself to suffer through at the moment.

"Hand me my jacket, Steve," she tiredly requested as she extended an arm blindly, her other hand coming up to sweep her short hair out of her face.

There was a brief moment of stillness before her long, thick N7 jacket was being carefully and gently worked up over her arms. Finally cracking her eyes open and deciding that the dim light of the shuttle didn't hurt her head too terribly much, she grumbled and pulled away slightly.

"I can get it," she slurred, and Garrus chortled softly.

"Of course you can, Shepard. In the meantime, shut up and stand still before you fall over."

She cast him a glare and thumbed the sleeves down over her hands, determined to hide as much of it as she could. They were always looking up to her, seeing her raised up with this pantheon of immortal untouchables; she could probably thank Miranda and the Lazarus Project for that. She remembered Liara's reaction when her left arm had been splinted after the fight with Sovereign; Shepard didn't know Asari eyes could get that wide. So she would not stumble out of the beaten shuttle with her wounds on display. She wouldn't take a stretcher to her cabin. That would do nothing for the morale of her people.

Kaidan knew this, Garrus understood it well, and Steve had seen the effects before. It was the only reason they humored her, though with some real frustration, and she swallowed hard. The heavy black sweatshirt was warming her quickly and she pulled the collar up around her chin as she took a shaky step from the three. Her boots clanked loudly on the metal floor and she felt like a dog cocking its head at a sonic whistle.

"You don't have to do this, you know. They can take it," Kaidan muttered mostly to himself.

It took the tempered steel she'd drawn from at the Villa to relax her muscles and fall easily into her skin. It hurt – God, it ached and burned and felt like acid through her veins – but she pasted on her usual half-smile and popped her sprained wrist up on her hip without hesitating. She tossed her squad and Steve a look that was apologetic but determined, and she nodded once.

"Yeah, probably. They're stronger than I am."

Without waiting, she palmed the door release beside her and forced her eyes to remain forward when the bright bay lights scorched her retinas. Shepard allowed herself a quick blink, though, and walked off the shuttle with even, steady strides. She heard nothing behind her – likely her people were getting their gear from the mission – but, likewise, she heard nothing anywhere in the bay at all. It wasn't the absence of sound, though. No, it was closer to a held breath in anticipation of the drop below the waves. Her steps slowed as she simultaneously looked around, a honed sense of danger abruptly blaring into awareness. It was so wrong, this feeling – _this is home! It's not fair!_ \- but she obeyed it immediately.

Things, at first, happened quickly.

There were sudden warning shouts from every direction at once, overwhelming her, and her eyes, dry and burning, couldn't make sense of the blur of movement in front of her. A hand gripped her loose collar and shoved her hard, harder than she could take at the moment, against a support beam. Her back hit first, her head cracking against the metal with a loud ring, and white stars swam in her vision.

Things then happened slowly, and they made no sense.

Shepard's fingers, still covered by her jacket sleeves, wrapped loosely around the fist pressed against her throat, and she dazedly tracked it to the arm and then to the body in front of her. Nothing was making sense, no sense at all. Not the whine of weapons heating up around her or the roar of a biotic amp powering into focus. Not the shrieking from people she loved and knew ordering someone – who, _who?_ – to back away. Not the silver barrel of a pistol wavering dangerously in her face.

Not the raw agony on Joker's face that nearly matched her own as he leaned against her, touched the gun to her temple, and screamed, " _You fucking bitch!_ "

At that, the world went very still and dangerously quiet, though there was a ragged panting that cut through the air with concerning irregularity – she eventually marked it as her own. Anytime before Ilos, Shepard would have responded with a steady tone. Before the Omega 4 Relay, she would have grit her teeth and shoved herself away and demanded an explanation while reaching for her gun. Before six months of house arrest, she would have revved her implant and made herself an exit. But this wasn't any kind of Before that she could handle.

Because this was also _After_. This was after Alchera, after Horizon and Mars, after Thessia with its blue skies burning red.

So her gaze was sluggish in working its way up to Joker's face, her eyes trying and failing to immediately lock on a specific point. The pistol against her head was strangely warm, and she resisted the urge to lean into it. Instead she almost welcomed the pressure of the pilot's hand above her collarbone as he pushed her roughly against the metal column behind her. That bone-deep weariness was at bay, if only for the moment, and she swallowed past the desert in her throat as she carefully made a threat assessment.

Joker's uniform was rumpled, his black shirt untucked, his collar askew. The thin metal bars that always marked him as pilot of the _Normandy_ were strangely missing, tiny holes in the fabric revealing their absence. Shepard tried to ignore the way the weapon in his hand shook, tried to block out the tortured grimace on the man's face, but couldn't help but notice on the tightness under his eyes and the dusting of drying salt around them.

This she took in within a moment, battlefield reflexes responding despite the depth of her lethargy, and her awareness expanded outwards. Of the ship crew there was, surprisingly, just James, and he was directly behind Joker, rifle up and aimed but expression shocked. Garrus and Kaidan had somehow flanked them in the three seconds everything was unfolding, the sniper's rifle up and primed, the biotic's armor smoking bright blue, both their expressions locked in a battle snarl. Cortez was by the shuttle, hovering at the door, clearly out of his element when not in a dogfight or a cockpit, though he looked hellbent on doing whatever he could to assist.

Because, no matter the Before or After, they were not going to lose the Commander, not again.

"Easy, Jeff, easy," Shepard softly murmured, loosing his wrists and holding her arms out to the side slowly.

Her shoulders screamed at the movement, and there may have been a hitch in her breath as two ribs that were previously cracked now informed her they were broken. Her bruised fingers slipped out of her sleeves and she made a downward tapping motion with her pointer and middle digits towards her most recent squad. Garrus glanced at Kaidan who shook his head once, refusing the order. Seeing it out of the corner of her eye, there was a frustrated, foggy realization in Shepard's head: politics again, talking down guns and making peace.

God, she was _so tired_ of being looked to for answers.

"Shut the fuck up, Commander," Joker finally bit out, jerking her in place, and she couldn't stop the grunt as everything within her protested the movement, loudly.

Blinking away the sting in her eyes as something in her right ankle ground against itself, Shepard lowered her arms and shifted her weight slightly.

Nodding carefully, guessing at the stupidity of it, she offered soothingly, "Okay, okay. You're in charge."

She wasn't wrong. In half a second, the gun was gone then there again, the body of it slammed with a backhand against her jaw. Her head snapped sideways and she felt the gash on the inside of her cheek reopen, flooding her mouth with familiar copper. Her left ear smacked against the post behind her and her hearing rang a bit, making it harder to concentrate. But she had enough presence of mind to jerk her hands at her crew, them knowing her signals after a hundred battles.

Still, Kaidan's growl was clear in the shocked silence of the deck and James' accent was heavy as he hissed, " _Dios, Joker..._ " Garrus said nothing, though a bright red dot abruptly appeared on the side of the pilot's chest.

The barrel was back at her temple as she finally turned her head forward again, carefully locking away the part of herself that was weeping inside and just begging to sleep. She didn't bother to swallow the blood, already nauseous, and instead let it fall from the corner of her lips.

"I said shut your mouth! You can't just ever shut up, can you, Shepard? You can't ever stop fucking with everyone!" Joker shouted in her face, and there was a distinct smell of whiskey on his breath.

She refused to move, refused for a moment to give him anything to respond to, and felt herself start to burn with a hot temper. That, she couldn't control.

"Have to give me more to go on than that, Flight Lieutenant Moreau," she finally baited angrily, leaning forward to pointedly press herself against the gun he still held. Her chest protested her movements loudly, sucking the oxygen from her lungs, and she had to wait a beat before continuing tightly, "You know, since I'm _always_ fucking with _everyone_."

Joker's hazel eyes were hard as stone as he pushed his face right up to hers and hissed, "Asari Huntress Aeian T'Goni."

Like a safety getting flicked off a rifle, Shepard felt every section of her careful compartmentalization shatter. There was an abrupt lack of warmth in the air as her blood drained from her face, and she saw the pilot's bitter victory flash across his expression for only a heartbeat before her eyes fell shut. The grip at her collar grew tighter, as though he was daring her to breathe, and she sunk against it as she tilted her head back against the column. Her throat, exposed, pale, and bruised, worked hard as she fought to contain the sudden explosion of regret from her heart.

Yes, she knew that name. It was etched in her soul, right next to Ashley's and Legion's and every other name from the memorial wall by the mess. It was another failure, another life snuffed and destroyed because she'd had two choices and had chosen _wrong_ , so fucking wrong. There were no do-overs, no save files to reload from and see everything play out a different way. She knew that name as well as she knew her own, and a toxic dread started to rise from her gut, choking her, taking what air her ribs hadn't stolen. For a long few seconds, there was nothing but her own ragged gasps, the man's hold on her throat punishing. She could feel the anxiety and fear rising in the auras brushing against her biotics, and failed to gain enough breath to reassure them.

"You've known for how long, Shepard? How long exactly?" the pilot demanded in a mocking tone, the round and rough edge of the firearm's mouth pressing bruisingly against her skin. "What, since right after Mars? Since you went to check on Alenko for the first time? Or was it later, after your boyfriend was on his feet, when you decided to see if there was anyone else there for you to _fuck over_?"

Joker's words were jagged, his tone holding a coldness that couldn't touch the iciest planets in any system, and Kaidan put a threatening foot forward as his fists glowed blue.

"Jeff, I will boil your blood as it pumps through your veins if you don't let her go," he said softly, voice full of quiet, self-assured promise.

Shepard wrenched her eyes open and tossed a panicked look at him as she uselessly tried to shake her head, instead managing to limit her airway even more.

"No, wait! Kaidan...don't!" she stammered, raising her hand slightly towards him, an order intrinsic in the motion.

There was frustration and shock and a dim bite of betrayal in the officer's face as she waved him down again. Everyone realized the strangeness of it from the get-go: Joker's actions were anything but normal for the man, and Shepard locking down her own biotics and refusing to use any of her training against him didn't make sense.

"Please, Joker..." the soldier gulped, deep-rooted misery blazing out from her face, begging him with all the breath she didn't have to _stand down_ ; she wouldn't be able to keep her crew from taking him out if this dragged on.

But the pilot seemed half-gone, ignorant of the increasing danger around him, and he shook his head as his breath came abruptly ragged.

"Tell them, Shepard! Tell everyone how you knew...you _knew_ that the bitch who killed my father and my...and my sister, in cold blood...she was sitting free in Heurta Memorial for three weeks and you...you did _nothing_! And when you decided to do a _single_ _goddamn_ _thing_ about it, you put a _fucking gun_ back in her hand!"

The way she blanched and shuddered at his words while dropping her gaze seemed to ignite a stronger fire in the pilot. He was rougher than before as he threw her to the ground by her throat, slamming her against the decking with strength that he shouldn't have had with his disease. She hit on her left side hard, crying out as another rib snapped under the pressure. Even as she reflexively spit out a sudden mouthful of blood her right arm was up, waving down her crew. She could feel them in the air, their desire to advance humming against the back of her brain, and she silently begged every deity she'd ever heard of that they wouldn't shoot.

Somehow, they didn't, though they all pressed forward a few paces, orders blasting through her hearing like rifle fire. But Joker shifted, his stance changing as Shepard painfully, slowly pushed herself to a kneeling position, and she glanced up through greasy bangs. He was in front of her, pistol leveled at her head in classic execution style, and his eyes were wild as he glared down at her. Inhaling sharply as there was a strange click in her side that was echoed by a knife of pain slicing through her awareness, Shepard ducked her head and wrapped her arms around herself. Shivering, there was another surge of hot iron through her teeth and she gagged before finding the strength to spit it out. It was gory and thick, post-battle saliva tinted with the aluminum taste of burnt eezo, and it splattered on the deck messily.

The silence that surrounded the two was different now, less a held breath and more a shocked pause. There was a hesitation across them all, a sort of collected gathering as she guessed her crew mentally asked themselves: what did Shepard know and when did she know it? Worse, what did she do about it?

And how many times had she failed, before and since?

The answer to that question was staggering, a high enough ratio that it made her quiver in place and gag again. The fact that this hadn't even crossed her squad's minds – that they hadn't even considered anything beyond the fact that their pilot held a gun to their commander's head – didn't make it through the broken window of her psyche. But her own belief in her guilt was enough to make Shepard finally lose every aspect of _everything_ within herself. She didn't care – couldn't care – as Joker's words became the framework of all she'd screwed up since she first stepped foot on Eden Prime all those years ago.

 _She knew. She knew and did nothing. And when she did something, it made everything so much worse._

Her eyes opened slowly to the floor, every pain in her body muted and numb behind an abruptly suicidal desire to make everything stop, no matter the cost. It all faded back behind some curtain of grey static, something she hadn't seen or felt since Elysium. This thing was terrifying and simple, a precursor of expected death, and it coupled beautifully with the overwhelming suffering that was nestled into every fiber of her reconstructed self.

"It's true," she finally said softly, eyes locked on some point far beyond the bulkhead, and she didn't mind the tremble of the pistol as it was shoved against her skin.

It didn't hurt anymore, not that she would care if it did.

"Hilary was a liability, and T'Goni didn't want to be captured." Her breath caught again, and she coughed once, that same strange click ratcheting in her ribs. It took her half a minute to continue faintly, "So she killed her in the barn behind the main house. She...she killed her so she wouldn't be caught, so she wouldn't be turned."

There wasn't the same sort of brokenness to her voice that there had been to Joker's, not even the strange rhythm that grief and anger puts into a vocal cadence. There wasn't any emotion or inflection, only the taint of exhaustion that Shepard had been living with for so long. There was just a deadness there like the silence of space, and it made the gun at her head shake harder.

She remembered the first time she'd gone to Huerta, desperate desire for her friend's survival making it her first stop upon docking. Shepard could vaguely recollect a quick meeting with Doctors Chakwas and Michel before begging an unconscious Kaidan to fight – _because she couldn't do this without him_. It had been true since Eden Prime, and she'd never deny it. And after, fried with fear and worry, she'd taken a few moments to stare out the massive windows in the lobby and recollect herself.

Then that horribly cold voice had come from behind her, T'Goni asking what color her eyes were before requesting a gun.

She didn't know how long she stood there, pretending to be enveloped in her own problems, and the words behind her spilled out like a dam breaking. She heard things she thought she knew, details shared over five card stud and blue vodka, but it wasn't until the Council had reconstituted her Spectre status and she'd gained access to the Asari's records that she'd put two and two together.

It was the hardest math she'd had to do in a long time.

"The officer assigned to her kept denying her a weapon when T'Goni asked. And she was always screaming at this nurse who...she looked _so much_ like Hilary."

Shepard had to pause here and cough again, less a tickle in her throat and more an ache in her chest making her duck her forehead back towards the decking. She panted hard, a faint whine on inhalation hiding in her gasping breath, and she pressed a hand against her side under her left arm. A firm bit of pressure made the dark dots fade from her vision and she pushed herself up with her sprained wrist sightly.

She thought she could feel the disapproval from everyone around her. It was cloying, suffocating. They wanted her to stand down – wanted her to _make Joker_ stand down – but that would take everything she didn't have. Because what she had, the only thing she had, was fortitude. Even in death and the threat of everything it entailed, she had a profound force of will. Nothing could take that from her. Not the Collectors. Not the Reapers.

And not some crippled pilot from Tiptree.

So she forced herself to continue speaking, to spill the words that put the taste of ash and brimstone in her mouth. Her voice wavered and hitched as her rhythm cracked.

"When the request hit the terminal at the Spectre office, I just...I approved it. I thought that she would want to protect someone else like she couldn't protect Hilary or...or Neaira. I thought that she'd defend...that she would _choose to defend_ the station like she was trained. I thought she would..."

Shepard trailed off, blinking as she raised her head slowly to stare into the bright lights above, and she ignored the way her dry lips cracked as she smiled faintly at nothing. She tasted something other than blood, though, and thought it might be salt. But that would mean tears, which she couldn't show. Because that would mean she was feeling something other than soul-deep defeat, and that wasn't possible, not since Vancouver and Kaidan's distant 'hello' from five feet.

She had soldiered on, like she always did, allowed Anderson to lead her into the lion's den that exploded in a fireball, killing the Committee that was still denying the true threat posed. And wasn't that normal? Since Eden Prime, since that Prothean beacon had blasted Shepard's brain with warnings of obliteration, since two mind melds with Liara and the Cipher being grafted into her head, she'd _known_. And she'd tried. And she'd failed. And that failure, that falling from the heights again and again, it had worn her down to the bone and left nothing. Still, she shouted and screamed and fought to have someone, anyone, hear her. Cerberus was the first to respond, the first to admit that she had truth buried in the hysteria, and that ally had destroyed every chance she thought she had of getting anyone to ever listen to her again.

But Anderson had welcomed her back to the fold, then Hackett, the rest of the Admiralty grudgingly admitting that maybe there was something coming for them after all. The boogeyman remained a dark and silent figure behind closed doors, though, and little preparation had been done.

For six months, Shepard had waited under house arrest for the skies to come crashing down, knowing she couldn't do a damn thing to stop it.

Since Eden Prime, since that Prothean beacon, the fate of the entire galaxy had been on her shoulders, and she was _one person_ , one soldier with a kickass resume and an eezo drive and a gun and nothing else against monsters from millennia past. It wasn't fair. It was never going to be fair. Maybe that's why she drew others to her like she did; maybe she wasn't looking to spread the burden, not really. Maybe she was looking for people that saw her – _her_ , Shepard, a living, breathing, failing, struggling human. Maybe she was looking for people who would hold their hand out and tell her that everything would be all right, that she would figure it out, because she always did.

She'd found them.

Every person on every iteration of the _Normandy_ had been her own guiding lights. They were constant reminders of the humanity that she was losing a day at a time, every decision, every fallen enemy and empty coffin stealing parts of her like birds pecking at her eyes. Shepard needed those reminders. Even Zaeed's slack internal compass and Garrus' occasional falls to baser instincts grounded her. The darker of her crew had found their better angels within themselves. The lighter of the rest? Well, they'd found that candle and added enough fuel to it that she could almost, _almost_ find her way home between missions. They were her strengths because she didn't have anything inside herself anymore other than duty, regret, and fear.

And here they were, gathered on a silent deck, watching as she knelt in abeyance and did nothing to defend herself. Her green eyes were dull, echoing a level of total destruction rivaled only by the Reapers. Her hands were loose, her amp deactivated, muscles lax. She did little more than present the wispy shell of herself as an offering to her friend's suffering.

It was all she could do – _it was all she felt she deserved to do._

Something about that line of thinking was obvious to Joker. Shepard didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the pathetic keening sound that erupted from her throat every time she tried to speak. Maybe it was the slight rocking motion of a mind destroyed as her arms wrapped around her uselessly. Maybe it was the way she breathlessly begged for forgiveness from the ghosts of her past as she kneeled before her pilot and stared upward at the death he held.

 _Mordin._

 _Thane._

 _Legion._

 _Ashley._

 _Wreav._

 _Benezia._

 _Rael'Zorah._

People who were and were not her crew but would be equally, eternally, and intrinsically linked to her command haunted her sleeping hours and her waking ones. There was ever a soul to be added to the list. For a short but horribly naive time, she'd thought she'd been done for the moment. Beyond the distant glimpse of a name on a scrolling list, Shepard thought she'd been freed from that damning syllable count of loss and wear and tear.

Then Hilary Moreau had topped the marquee and that illusion had exploded in a thousand orange pixels.

"I didn't...know. …..C-Commander..."

This voice was one she knew, one she associated with dark humor and sarcasm, a refuge from the pain now blasting through her system like a nova. She saw bruised knuckles tight as they danced over boards of light, and more tears dripped from her eyes and dimmed the silver in her sight. It shook and shimmered before finally fading from view. The gun at her head fell away slightly and she barely heard the choked words outside of the overlapping screams within her own head.

But, somehow, impossibly, she was almost stronger than them, and she found her own tattered voice. It rose in an unnatural tide of anger and rage, her soul ringing with the horror, the utter helplessness she felt in the face of what she saw everyday, the needless waste, the absolute exhaustive _why_ of everything pounding through her blood. Her eyes flashed blue and her headjack stung as she gave herself over to the flood, the aluminum taste on her tongue washing out the copper and pain equally.

"You _didn't_ _know_ , Jeff, because you didn't _fucking care!_ " she suddenly screamed, startling everyone in the bay.

Her voice rang out like a siren and echoed off the walls around them. Her breath caught again in her throat, the agony from her ribs blooming up through her chest and bursting through her like a firework, and she shuddered. There was an insanity to the venom within her, something deeper and darker than the hysteria that usually hunkered behind the leaden walls in her brain, and she let it melt away her usual restraints. Because this, this wasn't her. Like Mordin wasn't supposed to be dead, like Ashley wasn't supposed to be dust, she wasn't supposed to be _human_.

But anger, rage, defeat and sorrow and fear and everything she wasn't supposed to able to feel anymore – it was all human, so it was fallible, and she was supposed to be above it all. Instead, she was below it, drowning constantly, and praying no one saw the bloody bubbles rise from her lips.

"Every time I step off this ship, every single time, with any of my crew – my _family_ – is one more time we might not come back," Shepard growled lowly as she glared at her pilot. "You...you wait on the bridge and take it for granted that we will return, that Virmire is nothing more than a nightmare that happens once and never again. _You bet on it_ ," she hissed, her tone accusing and sharp, and Joker looked distinctly uncomfortable as he shifted in place.

It was a Shepardism, to be down and out and still turning the tables, and she thought, distantly, that maybe he should have been expecting it. The fact that he seemed not to pissed her off even more, and it bled into her tone and made her words more acidic.

"You see vids and read reports of the things that I've lived through, things that I've _done_ , and you think you're seeing the same things but you're _not_. Because you're not on the ground. You're not...you're not there, Jeff."

Shepard's voice lowered, her speech cadence slowed, and the blue eezo in her irises shimmered faintly.

"You're not picking up the dog tags from the middle of a city block and finding his father on the Citadel and handing them over without so much as a flag. You're not finding a locket in a box in the middle of a firefight and giving it to a grieving widow who just wanted closure for her child. You're not seeing a familiar face amongst terrified students and remembering him strung up with spikes driven through his arms. You're not bringing the messages of the dead to those waiting to die and watching the hope fade from their eyes with every step you take towards them."

Every sentence was like a bullet shot through a tidal wave, fast then painstakingly slow, the ends of her words trending downward as though she dug a grave with every syllable. The grind of her ribs was obvious in her breathless gasps and the way she held herself, but she forced herself on, driven by something she couldn't ever explain.

"And you...you're not seeing these questions on my screen – these treaties, these begging, pleading messages hitting one after another after another. You're not seeing the math, the...the absolutely _ruthless_ calculus of war."

Garrus shifted slightly, something looking like guilt crossing his stoic features, and Kaidan ground his teeth loudly enough to be heard above the hum of the ship's normal background noise. The ever-present whine of the rifle in James' hands shifted as he did, and Shepard ignored them all. Her vision, cleared from the bite of mass effect energy as it tanged through her body, was focused on her pilot, and she stared him down with passion she didn't think she had anymore.

"You don't see it, Jeff. It's math, calculus, an unending, unceasing, and merciless march of numbers. And _you don't see it._ "

Her breath hitched as her bones creaked under her skin, and the torrent of energy she'd had disappeared into the ether. The stiffness of her spine evaporated, she sunk back to sit on her heels again, and her eyes swam as the pervasive exhaustion washed over her. Joker saw the difference, saw the way the defeat and darkness spread through her, and took a half step forward, pistol forgotten in his hand. But he stopped when Shepard spoke again, words muted and quiet like before.

"You didn't see the message. You didn't see what I...what I _wanted_ to see in it. And all the signs were there. It told me everything. The stress leave, the paranoia, the possibility of self-harm. But I saw _Huntress_ , and so I saw _strength_. I saw Liara. I saw Samara. I saw Aria. Like you, Jeff, I saw what was written and nothing else."

There were a few moments of silence here, Joker's breaths coming hard as he stared down at his commander, and Shepard had stopped seeing him again, her eyes glazed as she shivered and murmured, "She waited four days after I approved her request. Four days...she was so _strong_. Then...she shot herself with the gun that I put back into her hand. She...she just ate a bullet. In the hospital. In...in front of six doctors, four emergency medics, and twelve patients. And the nurse, the one who reminded her of Hilary...Christ, she looked _so much_ like her. Aeian T'Goni stared at her and screamed like a Banshee and pulled the trigger."

Her words were rote, the dark report playing out in front of her eyes, scraping through her like a strangled plant starved of light. It was barbed and dry and broken and so painful to hold that everything inside her felt like shredded meat. It was with this crimson-tinted view that she again saw the man before her, his image phasing into existence as the sounds of a trillion deaths within her faded behind her confession. Like half-heard static he came into being, the volume of her grief lowered a notch in order to appreciate the depths of his suffering.

In his face, there was still heartache and rage, still an anger that words couldn't touch, but there was something else, something human in the face of her own shattering, and he panted for his own breath. Joker's normally lively eyes were on her but not, on her body though not her face, and she felt a current of air and distantly understood why. Shepard's jacket had slipped open in her struggle, her combat doublet roughed up and center seams apart. She knelt on shaky legs, exposed to her family, her team, her accuser. The mass of injuries on her torso glared out from her pale skin, blood dripping from reopened wounds. Joker's gaze raked over her, seemed to see her for the first time with eyes unclouded, and he exhaled sharply.

Swaying in a breeze of her own regrets, her own failings blasting against her psyche with the force of a hurricane, Shepard locked a weary, fever-bright gaze on her pilot's and licked her lips carefully. If he moved, if he looked away, she felt she would cease to exist, but she had to try.

"I'd die a thousand times if it meant I could have saved her," she finally promised, firm in words even as her lungs failed her.

She inhaled sharply through her nose, the dark spots in her vision spurring her on, desperate to finish before she lost her grip on life and the tremulous duty of living it.

"If I died for you...could I die for her? One time, a thousand times, a million...would it be enough? If I could die to save everyone, I'd paint the walls with every drop of my own blood to stop this spiral into hell."

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as all she'd been holding back roared through her, a gaping chasm of darkness and pain that started to swallow her from the inside. But she forced herself to look back up, ignoring the team around her, refusing to entertain all of their fears.

Shepard couldn't even handle her own.

She gently leaned forward and reached forward with broken, wrapped fingers and raised the gun he'd lowered. Pulling back and realigning the barrel with her brain, Shepard gave Joker a small nod and felt the warm slip of tears from her eyes.

"If it will help, kill me, Jeff. If it will help at all, kill me. If my death will undo any of the damage I've done, _kill me._ For everyone I couldn't save, every left turn when I should have gone right, every yes instead of no, kill me."

Her calloused fingers wrapped around his hand, her thumb laying over his trigger finger, the tape on her knuckle scratching his skin.

"For Ashley and Mordin and Thane. For Arcturus Station. For Luna Base. For every system and every person I've spent five years doing _nothing right_ to save, kill me."

There was more blood in her mouth, more salt on her tongue, and the click of the hair trigger sliding back a half millimeter echoed dully in her head.

"For your father. For your sister, kill me."

There was a second click, this one much louder, and Shepard blinked slowly, then her eyes slipped shut, exhausted and wrung out and hollow and _done_.

"Forgive me, and _kill me_."

Her thumb slipped back, the face of that boy from Earth swam in her vision, and she exhaled silently. She didn't brace, didn't tense, but moved one more time. And with her eyes closed, she didn't see anything.

Not the horrified look on Joker's face as he reached forward with his free hand. Not the shift of Garrus' sniper point from the pilot's chest to the pistol body. Not the blue waver of fields as Kaidan butchered a biotic charge through space-time. Not the tight then angry expression on James' face as he started to dash forward.

Reverse of before, everything happened quickly, then slowly.

Garrus' rifle rang out almost immediately, a concussion round slamming into the side of the gun, shoving it away from Shepard's head. Joker's hand reached hers on his at the same time, flicking the safety and shoving his fingers behind the trigger, effectively disarming it. James reached the pilot two heartbeats later and bodily slammed him down, yanking the gun from his weak grip and leveling his carbine at him.

Before all of this, the same moment Shepard had tried to make her last move, Kaidan was suddenly and instantly there, a barrier wrapped around him as he materialized in front of her with his left arm already swinging. He wasn't gentle as his armored fist connected with her jaw – he couldn't afford to be. The sound of his knuckles meeting her chin was overshadowed by the blast of the sniper shot. But he moved forward in the same motion, reaching out and catching her as she fell to the side.

The whirlwind was over, the flux of motion and fear ending in a shuddering gasp as Kaidan stared at the woman in his arms. Shepard was unconscious, his blindsiding haymaker catching her entirely off guard, and he shifted slightly as he knelt to the ground with her. She was completely boneless in his arms and, with her armor removed, he could feel how light she was. Her back rested against his thighs, her head pillowed against his forearm, and he glanced upward, taking in the group surrounding him. Joker was on his knees in front of James, hands on his head, his eyes wide with terror – not of the gun aimed at him or the anger of the people around him, but of the words Shepard had spoken. His guard was barely paying him any attention and was focused on his commander. Garrus had taken two steps closer, sniper rifle hanging loose and forgotten in his hands, eagle eyes tight and dark. There was a very small window of perfect silence, a very strange thing to them, just the dull noise of the drive core as it roared three bulkheads away, _thump-thump-thump_.

It sounded like a heartbeat and a cry for help, all at once.

* * *

It was a feeling she hadn't known before.

Where there should have been darkness, smooth lines of shadow crossed with the funky floating feeling that surgical medigel always left her with, there was, instead, pure, clean pain. It was sharp enough and widespread enough that it jerked her to awareness without any gentleness whatsoever. Her eyes wrenched open and, instead of the darkened viewports above her bed, she saw the grey and white ceiling of the infirmary. She blinked up at the sight, the dimness of sleep already pulling her back down, but she struggled through it for a minute longer.

The tight ache throughout her body was different, so different, than the quick nauseating healing of medigel or the heavy exhausting burn of injuries ongoing. It soaked through her in a strange way, making her tired without the normal pins and needles, making her teeth set firm without grinding.

So this was new, and new was always terrifying.

"How...how did I..."

Shepard couldn't complete the question, her tongue heavy in her mouth, and she was vaguely aware of a hand on her wrist, warm fingers loosely wrapped around her arm.

"Go back to sleep, love. You need it, and you've earned it."

The words were disembodied and distant, seeming to come from miles away, and she fought against the talons of cool unconsciousness that dug into her brain as her eyes slid shut. The tone was gentle, soft, soothing, and it smoothed over some of the ever-present fire in her heart.

"But I...need...need to..."

The grip tightened slightly, and there was a light touch on her cheek, familiar and comforting.

"You need to rest, Shep – that's all you need to worry about right now. Sleep."

She couldn't answer, pulled down as she was, and she railed against it hard, panicking and hyperventilating. She couldn't handle the nightmares, the whispers as everyone that had died, everyone she'd failed, screamed horrors and bled fear into her. The galaxy map swirled in her head, systems alight with Reaper warnings and dead relays and lost comm stations. Behind it was that same ticking marquee, the names of the dead marching onward into nothingness, and there was an echo from her memory.

" _Tell everyone how you knew...knew and did nothing."_

Then there was a hint of warmth surging through her veins, starting at her arm and suffusing through her system slowly. She may have sighed, may have whimpered as it slowed her breathing, but she sunk into it, hoping that there wouldn't be anything on the other side of the darkness.

"What's the square root of nine eighteen point oh nine?"

This voice was lower, a cross between a rumble and a growl, and the bands of a thousand unnamed emotions loosened slightly from around her throat. She exhaled slowly and evenly, turned her head slightly, and licked her lips.

"Thirty...point...three."

Darkness again, silent and free of nightmares for a time. She dreamed of blue waves on a beach of white sand, a familiar Salarian walking around with his subarmor wet and pants rolled up to his knees. He bent over, claws gently wrestling a pink shell from the soft ground, and there was a small smile on his face as he turned and held the conch out to her.

" _Might run tests on the seashells."_

The next time she awoke, it was less from pain and more from a deadened lethargy that was slowly easing out of her. Her eyes were gritty but they no longer burned, and the multitude of wounds that had previously screamed through her had lessened somewhat. She refused to open her eyes, wanting instead to enjoy what she had as long as she had it, and lay quietly in the hard medical bed. She could feel the telltale tug of tape and an IV at the crook of her elbow, the general deep exhaustion that was usually pumping through her veins lighter and easier to manage.

Which was strange, since the last thing she really remembered was pulling the trigger of a gun at her head.

Shepard didn't realize she'd said anything out loud, but was too tired to startle when there was movement above her. She recognized the smell of woods and electricity that Turians always had and expected Garrus' voice as he gently slid a cool rag over her forehead.

"You wake up and ask me why you aren't dead? Want to explain to me why you sound, of all things, disappointed?"

She couldn't, though, because she immediately fell back asleep.

This continued for hours or days – her internal sense of time was shot – but when she could finally do more than blink twice before passing out again, she felt so much lighter inside. Shepard was still in the infirmary; if the ceiling didn't give it away, the bed would have. The room was dim, lights darkened in the ship's night cycle, and she tried and failed to push herself up a bit. There was an incredible weakness in her muscles that made her blink in shock, and she jerked, surprised, when she detected movement to her right.

"Easy, Shepard. You've been asleep for three days. Easy," Kaidan soothed as he moved into her line of sight.

She stared at him, at the scruff of a beard that crossed his face and the slight bags under his eyes, and tried to speak as he leveled up the head of the bed for her. She instead gave an indignant croak and he chuckled a bit as he reached over and presented her with a cup of water. She let him help her drink out of necessity – she couldn't raise her hands without her limbs shaking – and she finally felt awake enough to speak.

"What happened?"

There was a scratchy quality to her voice that made her wince, and he shrugged slightly as he set the cup aside and reclaimed his seat beside her bed.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked neutrally, his eyes on her but guarded, his arms crossed loosely over his chest.

She cocked her head and winced, a dull headache and the rest of her throbbing slightly, and she frowned.

"The Leviathans on 2181 Despoina. I had to take the modified Atlas down. They scanned me or something...I don't know, we talked a lot telepathically. It was cold and dark. Got back to the shuttle somehow, made it back to the _Normandy_ , and..."

She trailed off, realization hitting her like a lightning bolt, and her XO could see the moment her walls slammed into place. Kaidan leaned forward, shaking his head as he grabbed her hand.

"No, don't do that, Shep. Tell me what you remember."

His words were firm but coaxing, and her teeth clicked as she snapped her jaw shut. She shut her eyes and tilted her head back, firmly reigning in her breathing as anxiety and fear tore through her like a hurricane. There was a long moment of silence as she struggled with herself, trying to put up the barriers inside like she always did, but she couldn't block out Kaidan's words.

"Tell me about Joker putting a gun to your head. Tell me about you asking him to pull the trigger. Tell me about you trying to pull it yourself. _Tell me how you tried to kill yourself._ "

There was an unnatural evenness to his words, like he'd practiced them again and again, and she swallowed reflexively at his control before a wry, horribly unamused snort came from her. There was more than a little darkness raising its head in her, and she felt the slack easiness of before draining away from her.

"Don't worry about it. Need to get with Traynor and see if she's got Kai Leng's position tightened down," Shepard muttered as she forced her eyes open and reached for the covers.

It was not without a little surprise that she hissed in pain upon moving her right arm, and she froze, staring dumbly at the bandage wrapped tightly around her wrist and thumb. Finally taking a few seconds to glance over herself, she realized that she was somewhat mummified by bandages and squares of gauze. Her right ankle was locked into some sort of rigid boot, her bare toes wrapped where the nails had long since been crushed or ripped out. Her chest and back, though hidden under the light scrubs she wore, were tightly uncomfortable with various bracing and binding straps. Her left arm was in a sling and fastened down tightly to her torso, likely to protect her shoulder blade.

"What the...did we run out of medigel or something?" she growled, wincing when her movements shifted her wrapped ribs in all the wrong ways.

There may have been some smugness in Kaidan's face as he shook his head and leaned back into his chair, though his eyes were still heavily shadowed.

"No, we didn't, love. You've been temporarily relieved of command for medical reasons, pursuant of section four seventy two of Alliance Regulations. Granted, over-application of medigel would have had you out of here twelve hours ago. Natural healing with glucose regulation and intermittent application of standard amounts of medigel will require to remain you under the doctor's supervision for another five days."

Her head snapping in his direction, there was more than a little anger in her face, and her features darkened considerably. There was a long minute of silence that was ruled only by the steady hum of the drive core hidden in the engine room. Shepard stared at him, green eyes flashing while locked on his brown, and it seemed to take her an enormous effort to speak evenly, though her tone was icy.

"Major Alenko, I'm wondering exactly what gave you the idea that any officer on this ship had the authority to make that decision. Doctor Chakwas, too. I have authorization from the Admiralty allowing over-use of medigel in all medical situations," she finally ground out evenly, attacking the only thing she had enough courage to face.

There was no victory in Kaidan's voice as he answered softly, "Admirals Hackett and Anderson revoked those authorizations via remote access, Commander Shepard."

The way the color drained out of her already pale face was almost poetic, but her cheeks flushed as she snapped, "Likely only effective until I sufficiently recovered to alter those orders. Get the doctor in here and get me back on my feet."

There was another long silence, this one much more tense, and Kaidan didn't move, his answer – and the resulting implications – perfectly clear.

Shepard's face paled impossibly further, her left hand fisting tightly on the covers pooled in her lap, and there was a sudden edge of panic that appeared on her face.

"No. No no no. That's eight days. That's eight fucking days. That's...no. No, get the goddamn doctor, Kaidan," she breathed, eyes widening, her breathing going from steady and even to fast and hard.

Standing and taking a step closer to the bed, the officer shook his head as he soothed, "I can't do that, Shep. You need to relax a little bit, okay? You're going to be fine."

But she wasn't hearing him, already reaching for the IV in the crook of her elbow and yanking it from her skin. There was a spurt of blood and an alarm abruptly began sounding beside her bed. Kaidan was shocked for a moment, frozen for a long enough space of time that Shepard had already shoved the blanket off her legs and was moving to stand. Breaking out of his stupor, Kaidan jumped forward and grabbed her upper arms, a tight frown on his face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" he barked as she struggled against him, and the way her eyes were darting and focusing on nothing around gave him an indication that she barely knew what was going on, either.

"I can't...no, no that's eight days. Eight days...no, too long, too fucking long," she muttered under her breath, and she was weak enough and injured enough that she wasn't able to fight back as he wrestled her back into bed, gentle but firm in his movements.

"We have time. You need to rest, Shepard. Take a deep breath," he finally murmured softly as he pinned her to the bed, and he could hear the door at the far end of the room grind open.

But Shepard shook her head miserably as she whimpered like a kicked dog, hot tears welling in her eyes and streaking down her face as she stared at nothing.

"Eight days. Eight days, Kaidan. _Eight days_ ," she whispered, eyes fluttering shut as she sank into the mattress. "Reapers are killing fifteen million a day. Eight days, Kaidan. That's a hundred and twenty million souls. A hundred twenty million dead while I lay here."

Shepard blinked her eyes open briefly, found his face, and locked her gaze on his with a coldness and logic within her presence that shook his bones.

"Whatever time you think we have, explain it to _them_."

* * *

It was ship's midnight on day five when Shepard finally escaped from the infirmary.

It was painful and inelegant, but it was an escape nonetheless. Oh, it didn't go unnoticed. She wasn't naive enough to think that she'd gotten out without sounding some silent alarm. By the time she stumbled into her cabin and collapsed on her bed, she'd pegged her tail as Garrus and waved her sprained wrist in the general direction of the small fridge unit under her lower desk.

"Dextro snacks on the top shelf," she murmured softly as she pressed her face in her pillow.

Shepard offered it mindlessly, naturally, because it was duty and friendship and everything she knew she was fighting for without having the names of it. Beyond that, it was because it was Garrus, someone who'd had her back from the beginning, who'd gone to the mat for her and with her every single time. And somewhere beyond _that_ , it was because it was something she could do without having to apologize for it.

So it felt good, and she let herself have that.

Her sleep was brief but restful, five hours tasting like ten, and there was a weight to her body that screamed of healing. When she finally blinked her eyes open, she found she didn't want to move. Kaidan was there, laying beside her, one arm jacked behind his head and the other resting on a datapad on his chest. He smelled like clean water and soap and was freshly shaved, and while there were still bags under his eyes, he looked younger and less haggard without the messy scruff of beard on his face. He was asleep, something that distantly surprised Shepard, and she watched him breathe for a few minutes as she quietly came awake a little more fully. It took that long for her to realize that a shower sounded absolutely wonderful.

Pushing herself upright was taxing but worthwhile, and she plucked at the scrubs sticking to her skin with a frown.

"Infirmary fashion not your thing, I guess."

Too well trained to jump, Shepard still felt her spine stiffen automatically as the familiar voice came from behind her. She opened her mouth to respond, then froze, realizing that she had zero clue what the hell she should say. So she snapped her jaw shut and exhaled sharply through her nose, looking pointedly away, and her hands tightened into fists as she waited for the lecture.

It was an unfair expectation but an truthful one. Kaidan was one who fixed things, who refused to back down until everything was to a status quo that he was confident he could maintain. It was that control inside and outside that he lived through and required of himself, and Shepard couldn't really blame him. That same control that drove him sometimes made her tear her hair out, but he was a balancing feature in her life that could never be duplicated. And for reasons she had known since shortly after Eden Prime, she would never want to change him.

So she waited.

Instead, Kaidan slowly and steadily rolled to his feet, stretching lazily before dropping his pad to the bedside table. He walked around to her side of the bed and ducked down, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head and tapping her cheek once with his trigger finger.

"I know you're dying for a shower, love. I've got a report to file and then I'll bring some chow back up for us," he said softly, and she swallowed hard as she refused to meet his gaze.

Maybe he was expecting her silence, because he just hummed under his breath and turned and strode out of the cabin. She waited until the door closed before turning and glancing after him, wondering, calculating. There hadn't been any censure in his voice, no berating tone tilting his words sideways, and it threw her. So she put that mystery aside and approached one she could solve: who had been in her quarters. Her room was the same as it had been before that last disastrous mission, her fish swimming in their blue tanks, her twin walls of models shimmering in the light, and she heard the faint back beat of music from its near-muted audio level. But there were some changes, too. Subtle, if she hadn't been looking for them. The fridge under her desk was slanted back slightly, like someone had shut the door a little too hard. There was a divot in her chair that seemed closer to the imprint of Turian armor. There were two dextro ration wrappers and a few torn wires in her trash bin. Traynor had been in there, too – her chess set from Aria was three moves different than she had last seen it.

Standing slowly, anticipating and letting the dizziness pass through her, Shepard tapped the music a few clicks louder and limped slowly up the stairs. Her main desk was untouched, though there was a stack of new datapads, screens asleep with disuse. She reached for them, duty and drive and regret burning through her, but paused just before her fingers brushed the metal. Because she was standing _just so_ , and the light was _just right_...

And her reflection stared back at her from the dead screen, and she didn't recognize herself.

Pulling back, moving quickly as she could, Shepard turned and headed into her bathroom, a different sort of strange fear bleeding through her system, and she stumbled to a quick halt in front of the mirror. And she flinched, because the woman in front of her was nothing like Commander Shepard of the Blitz. That soldier was tall, strong, firm and unwavering. And what was leaning against the sink in the dim lighting of the command quarter's refresher was _nothing_ like that.

The white and grey scrubs were slightly dingy and extremely rumpled, sweat stains and a faint trace of blood visible here and there on them. Her skin was pale and sallow, pulling tight over her cheekbones, making the yellowness of fading bruises appear more sickly than normal. There was a darkness under her eyes that made her green orbs unnaturally dull. Her short blond hair was matted and gnarled, there was grime worked into the roots and the creases of skin around her neck, and the sticky residue of medigel made every movement uncomfortable. Every inch of exposed skin was still covered in bandages, wraps and gauze that hid her healing wounds. Shepard looked back over herself, at the scrubs that hung loosely from her frame, the sharp angles of bone and hard muscle poking out in random intervals.

For the first time in years, she could see why other people worried about her.

 _Trust us to hold the line for a little bit. We've got you._

So she blinked back nothing that felt like tears and palmed on the shower. It took her ages to get her bandages removed, each one falling like a whisper to the floor and revealing some further part of her that was damaged and mid-mend. By the time the last of her new pink scars had been bared, the mirror was clouded over. The shower she took was long, far longer than any rations would allow, but she reveled in it. She scrubbed the dirt and grease from her skin, washed her hair three times before she felt halfway human, and stood in the scalding heat for an extra ten minutes afterwards. When she finally turned off the water, she was exhausted, but it felt manageable this time. It felt less like losing her breath and more like catching it.

Shuffling out in a billow of steam, Shepard sleepily blinked at her XO who was waiting patiently at the bed. She didn't say anything as he stepped forward and gently chafed her skin dry with an extra towel, helping her step into a pair of underwear and a loose shirt. He spoke softly under his breath as he checked her over afterwards, touch warm but clinical as he carefully evaluated each of her wounds. He was methodical enough that Shepard knew he had her injuries memorized, and that made something heavy mixed with shame bloom deep inside her. There were a few places he spread a bit of medigel on, wrapping them with clean gauze, and when he finished he pushed her gently to the sit on the edge of the bed. It took him a few minutes to get her to slurp down some thick broth, something like a potato and chicken mixture, and her biotic metabolism was burning hard enough that she had the presence of mind to thank him for it. Then she was down and out, sleep taking her hard and fast, and, damn her, it was _wonderful_.

For the first time since meeting Harbinger, the ruthless calculus of war dimmed to nothingness in her dreams.

* * *

The spread of stars outside the glass was mesmerizing.

The _Normandy_ was drifting slowly through space, the normal blue and red hues of FTL travel missing from its hull plating. Its destination was blank in the computer, just a random set of coordinates a week's travel into the space between stellar novas, and the ship spun lazily in the black nothingness. Far beyond them, the Rosetta Nebula churned in the distance, the open cluster of NGC 2244 appearing as a collection of glitter against the night.

It felt good, felt something like _right_ , to simply sit and stare at the majesty of it.

"Did you talk to Liara yet?"

Kaidan's voice was low and gentle under and above her, and Shepard shifted deeper into his embrace, resisting the urge to yawn as she nodded slightly.

"Yeah," she answered softly, breathing in the scent of his aftershave as she mindlessly nuzzled his collarbone.

The hold was chaste yet intimate, his strong arms wrapped carefully around her shoulders. They were both laying on the couch, Kaidan's back up against the arm of it, and she was sprawled out on top of him and huddled underneath a thick blanket. Her cheek was pressed into his chest and her tired eyes were locked on the window, her gaze tracking nothing as she mentally floated with her ship.

"She apologized a few hundred times, said she didn't realize that Joker had more information on it than she did. Turned out Edi hacked the Spectre terminal and felt obligated to tell him. Don't blame her, honestly," she decided rather indifferently, striving to keep her voice even, and she could tell by the way Kaidan tensed that she wasn't entirely successful.

Shifting and bringing a hand up to the back of her neck, he massaged the muscles there gently and sighed heavily, his breath ruffling her hair.

"All three of them should have known better," he finally muttered darkly, and there was a pregnant silence between the two of them before he added more hesitantly, "And I should have, too. I'm sorry for the way I spoke to you in the infirmary when you woke up."

Snorting, Shepard winced when her ribs bit at her and then added, "Ow."

Chuckling lowly, Kaidan waited as she tried to move into a more comfortable position, the looseness in her limbs proving her exhaustion. He caught her eye and frowned as she gave up and pushed herself to sitting, grinding her teeth as the last of her injuries reminded her they existed. He stayed where he was, his fingers dancing on her thigh, and she wrapped the blanket around her tightly and crossed her legs. The feel of him on her and the smell of him in her helped to keep the soldier grounded, helped to keep her in the now instead of back in the shuttle bay, and she thought hard as she stared into space.

"No, no. You had the right of it, at the time, anyway," Shepard finally reassured, voice steady but low.

She was still as she spoke, not tightened like a bowstring but firm as an oak, and there was a definite difference between the two. The steel that straightened her spine was less pulled from a volcano and more tempered in a forge, and it was the seven days of sleep and healing that had changed that within her. She was stronger now, maybe, or at least felt like she could project that strength better, and that made some of her internal drive burn a little bit harder.

"I was exhausted. Still am, actually, but it's better than it's been in years. And I was...hopeless. Destroyed. Broken. Everything that the Leviathans have felt for the last billion years, a lot of that came through the link they made with me. Made mine worse, darker, heavier."

Shepard paused, distantly aware of Kaidan's eyes very tightly locked on her, and she licked her lips as she searched for the right words.

"When Jeff...when he had that gun to my head, it was like a lifeline. I didn't want to die, but I just...I wanted everything to just _stop_. For a minute. For even half a second. I needed it to stop. Everyone depending on me, and me being just...just human. And being wrong, _so wrong_ , so many times. From the second he put that pistol against my skin to the second you laid me out, all I could think – all I could _feel_ bone-deep – was this relief because it would be over and if everything failed after that...maybe it wouldn't be my fault."

Her green eyes were dancing over the depths of space, her mind a million miles away, but she felt Kaidan's fingers grip her leg almost painfully.

"It's still true, of course. This is still just a fool's hope, a gamble on a machine that's never seen fruition in who knows how many cycles. It's still just a bunch of small, delicate mortals struggling against an artificial intelligence eons old with an eternity to live and the singular goal of annihilating life in the galaxy. We don't have a snowball's chance in hell, not really. And if it fails... _when_ it fails in whatever way, no matter when, it will still be my fault."

Her voice trended lower, that same darkness from the shuttle bay coming back into her tone, and Kaidan breathed her name softly, a command and a prayer all in one.

"And I'm afraid...of that moment, that brief flicker of existence, between me and whatever way death comes to claim me, when I'm alone with the knowledge that I did fail, and that everyone died because of me. And that will be all I have until I finally cease to exist. Just myself, whatever is left of me, crushed or bleeding or drowned, that quick space of time between my final heart beat and the last neuron firing – a near-dead shell alone with the understanding that I failed, and that everything I have done, everything everyone's sacrificed, hasn't been worth a _goddamn thing_."

This she mused into the still air of the observation room, the spiral of stars in her eyes illuminating the green within in a way the Cipher's influence always tried.

"I asked Hackett once, not a very long time ago, why he had chosen to put me in charge of...everything. The _Normandy_ , the war effort – all of it, he left it all to me like an bad inheritance. And he told me something remarkable. He said that you can pay a soldier to fire a gun, pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you...you can't pay him to _believe_. And from the moment he said it, I knew he didn't mean me. He was referring to you, to all of you, to everyone who has ever followed me. You have all believed in me from the very beginning. And that...is utterly terrifying."

Beside her, Kaidan didn't move, his own breath held tightly in his chest, and she could feel the way his biotics trembled under his control. She could feel the anxiety within him that tried to break free of his constraints, the way her words made that roiling emotion sap the strength from his soul.

Turning slightly, she fixed him with a firm look, lips pressed tightly together, and Shepard nodded once.

"So I am scared, completely afraid, through and through. But...I will _never_ let fear compromise who I am," she swore. "Never again."

* * *

Twenty five minutes after being officially returned to command capacity, Shepard stood quietly at the entrance to life support. Two guards were posted at the door, their arms crossed and weapons holstered. There was a certain sort of cold anger in their stances, and she exhaled sharply as she stared at the grey portal. Their loyalty was admirable and welcomed, but this sort of division was hell on the crew. It was even worse when the man under suspicion was their ace pilot and boyfriend of the shipboard AI; when Shepard's life had started looking like some ancient soap opera, she had no idea.

The guards at the door were respectfully averting their eyes, and she was thankful. She'd already been standing at the entry for almost five minutes, mentally weighing her options in the situation, and she still wasn't sure exactly how she was supposed to approach the coming conversation.

Alliance Rules and Regulations didn't have something that quite covered this. It was temporary insanity on Joker's part brought by grief and loss, the same as it was on her own side. Despite the severity of him bringing a gun into the mix, on paper, there was barely any difference between what had happened in the shuttle bay and two officers throwing punches after a shitty game of poker. The human military ran a tight ship, but humanity was just that: human, fallible and utterly unpredictable. The looser language in some of the code allowed for it, which was the main reason Joker was in a relatively self-imposed exile instead of being shipped off to prison.

That, and Shepard's good word.

So she stood, and stalled, and tried to figure out how to deal with this. Kaidan had offered to step in, Garrus as well, but their intervention wouldn't have fixed anything. And this could be – and absolutely would be – fixed. Squaring her shoulders, feeling more like she was going into battle then crossing a doorway, she finally reached forward, tapped the release, and stepped into life support. The door hissed shut behind her, sealing quietly, and Shepard looked around the room quickly. The wall lights were lower than normal, the images of Thane's weapons ghosting through her memory, and she swallowed hard before redirecting her attention.

Joker was sitting at the table, his back to her, a stack of datapads in front of him; some were lit with code running across them, others were dark, and a few others were shattered, their screens cracked. The cot that the previous tenant had placed against the wall was still there, a blanket and pillow haphazardly thrown over it, but it didn't really look like it had been slept in recently.

"Hey, Shepard."

The pilot's voice was low and soft, and as he set his current datapad down, he didn't turn to face her. But while the man's words were steady, it was only from her long years with him that Shepard noticed any strain in the tones at all. So there was an appropriate amount of concern on her face as she moved forward and came to the window that showed the drive core. She gave it a cursory glance before placing her back against the glass, turning to the table and taking in the flight lieutenant. Joke was clad in his usual uniform, the dark blue collar rising high up his throat, and his knee bounced quickly under the desk. It was this unusual tension in his movements, the way his eyes refused to come anywhere close to her face, that made her forgive him and pardon him, all at once.

It hadn't been his fault, any of it. Her exhaustion and fear, his anger and fury – it was humanity in its purest form. She should have told him. What she had learned, what she had done, and what had happened afterwards was as much his story as it was hers. So she blamed herself for the gun in the shuttle bay and for the hell that was built around it. He had every right to his reactions. She wouldn't begrudge him any of it. But she would never forgive herself for putting him in that position in the first place.

"Evening, Joker. How are you?" she finally asked conversationally, and the lightness in her tone visibly startled the pilot.

Shepard pretended not to notice, though, and waited with a pointed stare. So the man understandably hesitated, then nodded back with his gaze still hidden behind his cap, and responded quietly, "I'm fine, you know, considering...I mean...Shepard, what the hell? I mean, really, what the actual hell? There was...and I...and then...you just..."

Sighing, the Marine ran a hand through her hair and guessed, "You're wondering why I didn't kick you out of my crew, off my ship? And since I know about Edi hacking the Spectre terminal and locking down the elevator, you're trying to figure out why she wasn't permanently deactivated, either?"

There was a sort of sadness in the way Joker physically flinched, and it actually made Shepard chuckle out loud. So she took a few steps forward and claimed the empty seat across from him. She winced a little as she sat, a few of her ribs still smarting, and it made Joker nearly rise to standing, his hand already out to assist. But she waved him down, sighing lightly as she made herself comfortable, and shook her head.

"Relax, Joker. Think you owed me more than a few busted ribs, in all honesty. Too bad Kaidan got in the punch you deserved to give me, instead."

The expression of horror that crossed the pilot's face was almost comical, and she chuffed it away.

"Commander, you...I attacked you. I broke three ribs and cracked your hyoid bone. I put a gun to your head!" Joker snapped as he finally raised his eyes, irritation at her blasé approach to the situation apparent.

Shrugging slightly, Shepard tried for levity again as she conceded, "You're part of the club now, at least. You, Kaidan, and Wrex, of course. Grunt and Javik both tried to take me out when we first met, and Zaeed tried to drop an oil refinery on my head. And we're not going to bring up Jack and the plethora of ways she tried to splatter me against a wall those first few weeks."

His voice rising, the man shook his head and exclaimed, "I can't...I honestly can't believe you right now! Have you even realized exactly what the hell happened last week?"

But the look she suddenly leveled him was extremely icy and dark, and her tone matched it as she immediately objected, "I kept your family's death a secret and rearmed the woman responsible. And when you found out about it, things went south. That about sum it up?"

Joker forcefully shoved himself up and slammed his hands against the table, leaning forward as he snapped, "I was going to kill you! Goddammit, Shepard, I wanted to blow you fucking head off!"

Staying seated, the Commander's voice rose to overwhelm his volume, her vocal presence filling the room as she shouted back, "And I fucking _wanted you to_!"

This time, the shocked horror that froze on the man's features was anything but humorous, and the way he fell back into his chair like a discarded marionette doll looked painful. But Shepard didn't move, refused to let her eyes do anything less than hold him in place, because she needed him to _see_ , to _understand_ , or they were never going to be able to move past this.

"It wasn't a bluff, or a ruse, or any sort of reverse psychology when I put my thumb on yours and tried to make you pull the trigger. It was exactly what it looked like. And it was because I was exhausted, tired of losing, tired of being wrong, and just...just _done_ , Jeff, with this goddamn war. You threatened me with nothing less than peace and rest and I _wanted it_ ," she explained, her words whisper soft but weighted with truth. Joker said nothing – what could he say? – and Shepard finished, "And it was weakness, and I should never have done that to you."

Shaking his head, Joker argued, " _To_ me? Commander, you didn't –"

Finally glancing away, Shepard interrupted, "I spoke with Edi. She locked down the elevator to confine the rest of the crew to the engineering bay and above; she was trying to limit the number of variables and, therefore, lower my risk of death. She had determined that there was, at most, a two point seven eight percent chance of you truly harming me. But Edi knew...she told me that my own capacity for such a thing was 'significantly higher'. So she bet on you, and Kaidan and Garrus and James, to fight for me when I couldn't – when I didn't _want to_. Even...even then, with everything you were dealing with, she knew that you were stronger than me, like everyone is, always."

There was a very long period of silence following this, barely broken by Joker's shallow breathing as he stared at the profile of the woman before him, and Shepard let her mind drift for a time, taking solace in the quiet while the drive core hummed pleasantly in the background. But duty pressed at her forcefully, almost accusing in its constant presence. So she set her jaw, turned back to her pilot, and sat ramrod straight in her chair.

"This is the part where I say I'm sorry, and mean it. This is where I tell you that, of all the things I wish I could go back and change, the way I handled this is pretty damn close to the top. And...I am so sorry, Jeff. For Hilary's death, and your father's. For all the people of Tiptree who were rightfully proud of you for becoming the best helmsman in the whole of the Alliance. I said this all before when there was a chambered round a foot from my head, and I hope you know that then, now...it's real," she explained, the sincerity of her words clashing with the stiffness of her body, and she felt awkward leaving it at that.

"And I...took lessons from this. Removing weakness isn't the same as creating strength. So my family _is_ my strength. Because I don't have it, and I can't find it in myself. When I can't see anything beyond the fear that takes over every time I realize I'm failing, I look to my crew. I look to _you_ , Jeff. And in the shuttle bay, I took advantage of that strength and tried to use it in a way that it should never be used. So you broke my ribs. You cracked my throat." Shepard leaned forward, piercing his hazel eyes with her green gaze, and she added softly, "But I tried to make you kill me."

A beat of time, then she demanded gently, "Which crime is worse?"

To that, Joker had no response. He just stared at her, slack jawed, completely still, and Shepard looked right back at him. There was very little that could be said, because the answer was abundantly clear. There wasn't any argument that would make that question look any differently, either. So they simply stared at each other, and it was only when one of the datapads between them beeped with a notification that Shepard finally dropped her eyes.

"When you...when you were listening to T'Goni, did she...did she say anything? About my dad? Or...or Hilary?"

This, Shepard wasn't expecting. Her face paled as she yanked her attention back to her pilot, but there was a hesitance in his face that was backlit by a _need_ to know. There was no desire there, not really. Just raw need. So she steeled herself again, pulled strength from somewhere...this one tasted like Garrus, all bite with real bark, but it was tempered with understanding. Ah, that was Kaidan mixed with Tali.

"Hilary fought beside Aeian for two days against Reaper forces. Your little sister killed a few husks, with a...a _stick_. The Huntress was very proud of her for that. Your father...there were only allusions, nothing concrete. There was indoctrination present, though."

Her words were even and slow, and Joker nodded steadily throughout it, a ghost of a grin lighting his face at his sister's accomplishment.

"She was always a scrappy thing. Thin as a bean and smart as a whip, mom used to say. But did...did they suffer?" Joker asked hesitantly, pulling back from the table, and Shepard couldn't hide her flinch. It took her a few blinks to clear her vision, then she forced herself to answer, "Not as long as if they'd been turned. For all her faults, Aeian saved them from that, at least."

With it said aloud, there seemed to be a clarification to the situation that hadn't dawned on the pilot before. That, with Tiptree invaded and overrun by Reapers while evacuations staggered to a halt, the population would have become enemy troops. Eventually, or maybe even all at once, they would have been indoctrinated, changed into a monster's nightmare, and set loose on their own kind. And so, while there would never be forgiveness for the dead Asari, there'd at least be a sense of thankfulness. When that unexpected measure of peace crossed Joker's face, Shepard felt like an intruder and completely out of place, so she willingly turned her attention back to the datapads still scattered across the tabletop.

"What have you been working on in here for the last week, anyway?"

And that was it.

Joker seemed like he was about to press the point, but the look Shepard gave him was quietly desperate. She knew it shouldn't be this simple, not for either of them. What she hadn't told him was monstrous, the way he'd reacted equally so. They'd both held a form of the other's death, and it wasn't an easy thing to forget, nor a pleasant thing to remember. And Shepard hadn't lied: she _needed_ him. As a pilot, as a friend, as a smartass to keep her in line. As the comic relief in a galaxy upended to some level of insanity, Joker was integral and necessary. She admitted it to herself, and that made her betrayal of his trust all that more visceral.

She was taking the easy way out. She knew it, would openly admit it, and yes, _this_ was that backwards psychology everyone expected from the underdog. Joker thought he'd done the worse wrong, so he was wanting forgiveness, but Shepard knew that if the history books told this story, then she'd be the villain. People like her were somehow labeled as heroes. They were these deities to the everyman, and she _hated it_ , because that meant that there were people around her – good people, better than her – who denied their own strengths in the face of what she appeared to be.

Like Joker, risking his life as he attacked her, pulled a gun on her, threatened her with death while being threatened with the same, all in the name of avenging his family.

 _That_ was real heroism. That was strength and character and truth of self. That was real and something that could be touched and defined. That was everything that Shepard was missing within herself, yet she continued to persevere because she found these people, these champions, these stars among candles, and she _used_ them. Unapologetically, without remorse, she used them. Because that...that is what heroes really did.

Yes, they hold on five minutes longer than anyone else, but they also have less of a reason to.

Heroes were people who moved forward for selfish reasons, who worked for their own better sleep at night. Just _people_ , humans, flawed and imperfect, who occasionally performed great deeds on accident, on the way to getting what they wanted – that was what it all really was.

Saddled with the expectations and demands of an entire civilization and more, Shepard was their hero, just like they needed her to be. But really, she was simply a vehicle of her crew's strengths mixed with her weaknesses, and society toasted _her_ while they should honestly award _them_. All Shepard cared about was ending this nightmare for her own sake. And yes, for the sake of those she loved, absolutely, but only because that meant easing her own pain as well. Selfish, all of it, damnably so, arguably wrong, but the results were undeniable. Saren dead, Sovereign defeated, the Collectors destroyed, the Genophage cured – _selfishness can move worlds._

But there were limits to the power of this peculiar type of industry. It could only continue as long as there was something feeding the flames. And _that_ was Shepard's true strength. The warriors she found and the things she saw within them, that was what she could offer to the fight. She could be the sunstone for their hidden talents and bring them clearly into focus even in the fog of war. So she needed them, these assets, like queens needed pawns while subsequently being beholden to them in their entirety. As it was, she couldn't move around her life like the chess pieces in her cabin, couldn't do anything more than keep her deck stacked with every wildcard she could find. One of her aces was a Joker, and she still needed him.

Leveling him an expectant stare, Shepard played her hand and waited.

"Uh, Hackett posted a message on the ship's board about some refitting. Here, let me read it to you. 'Um...yada yada _Normandy_ into dry dock on the Citadel for much needed repairs. Uh...let's get your crew out of there. You're all on shore leave.' Goes on to say something about Anderson's apartment on one of the Wards. So I was going over the retrofits they've got planned, making sure they're not going to mess her up too badly. Figured...you know, if this was my last posting as a pilot for the Alliance, I wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of."

The way Joker's tone was self-depreciating yet hopeful made Shepard smile, and she nodded as she stood, already stepping towards the door as she fell into her usual stride. Without much of a lag, her pilot was right beside her, their movements familiar and coordinated.

"The timing would be suspicious if I didn't know Kaidan had reported a slightly edited version of this mess to the Admiralty; we're half a league from burning out, and this proved it. Get the shortest course through secured space plotted in and distribute an alert to the crew," she ordered as they crossed from life support to the elevator, waving away the guards with a small nod. "Edi, I know you've been listening. Got an ETA?"

The elevator rose smoothly through the decks as the AI's voice immediately responded, "Six relay jumps and two FTL dumps are necessary to reach the Citadel. Anticipating an eleven hour arrival time."

Nodding, Shepard let Joker take the lead towards the cockpit through the CIC and replied, "Good enough. Keep scanning for emergency traffic, but our priority is shore leave. I think everyone's earned a relaxing vacation."

Joker scoffed and muttered, "Yeah. We've got Spectres Shepard and Alenko on board. Didn't you learn anything on Eden Prime? Nothing _ever_ goes smoothly for Spectres."

Grinning as the man sank into his leather seat, everything shifting back to a wonderful sort of normal, the Marine waved away his words and asked, "Come on, what sort of trouble can we get into on the Citadel?"

* * *

 _~ Regret is a form of punishment itself. ~_


End file.
